Author: Rich McKay
(Reuters) – Millions of Americans from the Lowlands to the East Coast face the threat of blizzards, heavy snow, dangerous ice and freezing rain through Monday, the National Weather Service said on Saturday.
The governors of Kentucky and Virginia declared states of emergency ahead of the winter storm.
“The storm is still taking shape,” meteorologist Rich Bann of the NWS Weather Center said Saturday night. “But this thing has multiple hazards from heavy snow on the plains to significant ice covering roads further south.”
He added that more than 60 million people in the US were affected by winter weather warnings, watches or advisories this weekend.
From 1 inch (2.54 cm) to 1 foot (30 cm) of snow was seen in a band stretching east from Nebraska and Kansas through Ohio, Indiana, southwestern Pennsylvania, and northwestern Virginia. Ice could break power lines and cause widespread outages.
A wintry mix of freezing rain and ice will hit southern Missouri, Kentucky and Tennessee on Sunday, Bann said, likely making roads dangerous and downing power lines.
“It will be almost impossible to drive in some areas,” he said.
Missouri’s Kansas City International Airport was temporarily closed Saturday afternoon due to rapidly accumulating ice, officials announced on social media.
Bann said the storm should move across the East Coast to the Atlantic Ocean by late Monday, but a new blast of arctic air will bring bitter cold to the eastern two-thirds of the US by the middle of next week.
